Afrihost CAPPED ADSL Feedback (MTN)

[MrGray]

Last night I pointed out how a specific protocol was being irrefutably blocked. Afriman addressed all other complaints except on this bombshell (considering that we have repeatedly been told capped is unshaped) ... crickets.

 

[Internet_Junkie]

10meg line

 

[Flameboy ZA]

40Meg line http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3797732083

 

[Schizoid29]

I'm considering dropping my current 4Mbps uncapped bundle for a 10Mbps capped (100Gb) bundle since the pricing is similar and most months I only use 50Gb-80Gb. The telkom adsl exchange checker also confirms that 10Mbps should be available in my area.

My main concern is that another guy that lives close to me reported that his line became unstable and dropped his connection frequently when he upgraded to 10Mbps (possibly due to the distance to the exchange?) and his connection is now being limited to 6Mbps to help with stability. Is there anything I can do to check if this'll be a problem for me? (i.e. SNR, line attentuation etc.) Otherwise I'll just use the 4Mbps capped bundle and pocket the difference.

 

[AfriMan]

Afriman - Suvesh.

We know it is IPC capacity issues. Just upgrade your IPC capacity - problem solved.

We'll have to do much more investigation into this. Simply upgrading IPC whenever demand increases will raise upstream costs considerably and that will ultimately affect the end user. We need to make sure the we remain price competitive and affordable. As we also know, upgrading IPC is not an overnight solution, and probably will involve some time, so at the moment we're doing what can be done now to improve performance in the short term, while we plan for the long term.

 

[AfriMan]

Last night I pointed out how a specific protocol was being irrefutably blocked. Afriman addressed all other complaints except on this bombshell (considering that we have repeatedly been told capped is unshaped) ... crickets.

I don't think we can just simply start ripping apart the network based on this assumption. We need to do troubleshooting, and monitor traffic at the shaper to see whether there is any kind of policy acting on this traffic before we can start making blanket changes. Ultimately, jumping he gun is not going to give you the result you want and possibly create other problems on the network. We have to take a systematic approach, make sure we look in the right place for the issue and then test a potential solution before deploying any changes. I've asked the question with the network people, so it will depend on their feedback.

 

[i.got~issues]

I don't think we can just simply start ripping apart the network based on this assumption. We need to do troubleshooting, and monitor traffic at the shaper to see whether there is any kind of policy acting on this traffic before we can start making blanket changes. Ultimately, jumping he gun is not going to give you the result you want and possibly create other problems on the network. We have to take a systematic approach, make sure we look in the right place for the issue and then test a potential solution before deploying any changes. I've asked the question with the network people, so it will depend on their feedback.

Again "at the shaper" should be neither here nor there on Business Uncapped and Capped accounts... again.
These accounts should be by their very nature untouched on all protocols at all times, as they are marketed and sold by AH.

Quack+walk-doesnotneedbatteries=duck.

 

[AfriMan]

Again "at the shaper" should be neither here nor there on Business Uncapped and Capped accounts... again.
These accounts should be by their very nature untouched on all protocols at all times, as they are marketed and sold by AH.

Quack+walk-doesnotneedbatteries=duck.

That was my original point on garp's first post saying that we are inspecting packets and blocking mySQL traffic. We don't shape Business or Capped, so those policies don't act on his traffic in any way. Since we don't shape by port or protocol (and he had said that traffic on the same port worked when uncompressed) then it's not a blocked port. Hence we have to troubleshoot and ensure that we can replicate the scenario. Then, in the worst case, examine his traffic as it goes through our systems and verify if their is any policy which could be affecting traffic in anyway. To jump to the assumption that Business must be shaped is probably not going to get us closer to the answer

 

[i.got~issues]

That was my original point on garp's first post saying that we are inspecting packets and blocking mySQL traffic. We don't shape Business or Capped, so those policies don't act on his traffic in any way. Since we don't shape by port or protocol (and he had said that traffic on the same port worked when uncompressed) then it's not a blocked port. Hence we have to troubleshoot and ensure that we can replicate the scenario. Then, in the worst case, examine his traffic as it goes through our systems and verify if their is any policy which could be affecting traffic in anyway. To jump to the assumption that Business must be shaped is probably not going to get us closer to the answer

Anybody using Afrihost Business Uncapped / AH Capped here think their services are not shaped or throttled over the last month in the "demand managed" regions?

Anyone see a consistent difference from 8AM onwards on international throughput?

Hmmmm....

 

[Cicero]

Is it normal for Afrihost to disconnect me when my capped account is capped?

My account got capped on Saturday night and I couldn't even log into the client zone to top it up, I had zero internet. I logged into my router and although my DSL was up and syncing, I wasn't connected to any ISP. I had to log into my backup WA account, then log into Afrihost clientzone to top up data, and finally change over back to Afrihost.

All my other accounts still let you log into the client/customer zones to at least top up.

Shouldn't be the norm at all, drop me a PM and I'll have things checked out for you.

Just so everyone knows. This is actually their practice in some cases, to completely disconnect you when you reach your cap. Then the onus is on you to have a secondary ISP account to get onto the internet, onto the client zone to load more data onto your Afrihost account if you like.

I will admit I got a "would you like to top up" sms from Afrihost after they cut me off, but more often than not I dont just want to top up with 1gig, especially over sms. I'd like to at least be able to access the client zone without having to log into my router.

 

[AfriMan]

Anybody using Afrihost Business Uncapped / AH Capped here think their services are not shaped or throttled over the last month in the "demand managed" regions?

Anyone see a consistent difference from 8AM onwards on international throughput?

Hmmmm....

I think we've spoken about this at length. Shaping or throttling would target overall throughput or specific services like P2P or NNTP. Contention is a completely different story and will affect overall throughput and possibly latency intermittently.

 

[AfriMan]

Just so everyone knows. This is actually their practice in some cases, to completely disconnect you when you reach your cap. Then the onus is on you to have a secondary ISP account to get onto the internet, onto the client zone to load more data onto your Afrihost account if you like.

I will admit I got a "would you like to top up" sms from Afrihost after they cut me off, but more often than not I dont just want to top up with 1gig, especially over sms. I'd like to at least be able to access the client zone without having to log into my router.

We do allow access to the clientzone in the soft cap stage, which is just after reaching cap up to a certain percentage over. Once this has been further exceeded. we institute a hard cap where no services are available until more data is purchased. We have always had this system in place on DSL. Where data overage is allowed, this reclaimed from topup or from the future months data allocation.

 

[MrGray]

I don't think we can just simply start ripping apart the network based on this assumption. We need to do troubleshooting, and monitor traffic at the shaper to see whether there is any kind of policy acting on this traffic before we can start making blanket changes. Ultimately, jumping he gun is not going to give you the result you want and possibly create other problems on the network. We have to take a systematic approach, make sure we look in the right place for the issue and then test a potential solution before deploying any changes. I've asked the question with the network people, so it will depend on their feedback.

"Assumption"? Really? One specific protocol was blocked starting last night at about 6:30pm. Another flavour of the protocol with compression, was not. This behaviour was only repeatable on our Afrihost capped account (didn't try business uncapped). Since I found it hard to believe given all the assurances, I repeated this from several different devices on several different ISP's, including tunneling via a VPN (where it worked since you would not have been able to "shape" those packets).

And I see you admit that capped traffic goes through a shaper with policies. Interesting.

 

[Cicero]

Is it normal for Afrihost to disconnect me when my capped account is capped?

My account got capped on Saturday night and I couldn't even log into the client zone to top it up, I had zero internet. I logged into my router and although my DSL was up and syncing, I wasn't connected to any ISP. I had to log into my backup WA account, then log into Afrihost clientzone to top up data, and finally change over back to Afrihost.

All my other accounts still let you log into the client/customer zones to at least top up.

Shouldn't be the norm at all, drop me a PM and I'll have things checked out for you.

We do allow access to the clientzone in the soft cap stage, which is just after reaching cap up to a certain percentage over. Once this has been further exceeded. we institute a hard cap where no services are available until more data is purchased. We have always had this system in place on DSL. Where data overage is allowed, this reclaimed from topup or from the future months data allocation.

I realise that from your PM, but I have only ever experienced a hard cap and its something people should keep in mind. This soft cap is rather elusive, but I'll take your word that it does in fact exist.

 

[i.got~issues]

"Assumption"? Really? One specific protocol was blocked starting last night at about 6:30pm. Another flavour of the protocol with compression, was not. This behaviour was only repeatable on our Afrihost capped account (didn't try business uncapped). Since I found it hard to believe given all the assurances, I repeated this from several different devices on several different ISP's, including tunneling via a VPN (where it worked since you would not have been able to "shape" those packets).

And I see you admit that capped traffic goes through a shaper with policies. Interesting.

Thinks to myself;

/thought bubble begin

I see IPC capacity bottleneck again (seems to be a twice yearly thing)... and see resulting demand "management" on all accounts via shaping profiles... described as "contention constrained throughput" (starts at around 8AM each morning funny that)... still adding customers into these regions and then tweaking shaping profiles an all accounts there... while muttering about expense of actually mitigating oversubscribed bottleneck and still charging affected region clients full price for a fraction of their service... IPC upgrade not seen as investment but as a not-happening-yet expense while proactive action becomes nothing more than a re-active monitoring and tweaking of shaping policies and repeated apologies, denials and re-arranging deck chairs on the titanic.

/thought bubble end

 

[AfriGuy]

"Assumption"? Really? One specific protocol was blocked starting last night at about 6:30pm. Another flavour of the protocol with compression, was not. This behaviour was only repeatable on our Afrihost capped account (didn't try business uncapped). Since I found it hard to believe given all the assurances, I repeated this from several different devices on several different ISP's, including tunneling via a VPN (where it worked since you would not have been able to "shape" those packets).

And I see you admit that capped traffic goes through a shaper with policies. Interesting.

Lets get out team to take a detailed look into what happened here - drop me a PM with your DSL username and the specifics around what happened

 

[AfriGuy]

We are currently experiencing increased demand in the North[/n] region (Johannesburg, Pretoria and surrounding areas). As a result, some users may experience diminished throughput (speeds) on their DSL.

Our network team are investigating the issue and will be implementing changes to optimise efficiency to manage demand. We apologise for any inconvenience to affected clients and assure them that we are doing everything possible to improve their internet experience.

 

[W@P]

Wonderful 20mb VDSL speeds. Great stuff !

 

[AfriGuy]

Wonderful 20mb VDSL speeds. Great stuff !

View attachment 153656

Really sorry about the slow speeds, where abouts are you based?

 

[Bufamotis]

Just so everyone knows. This is actually their practice in some cases, to completely disconnect you when you reach your cap. Then the onus is on you to have a secondary ISP account to get onto the internet, onto the client zone to load more data onto your Afrihost account if you like.

I will admit I got a "would you like to top up" sms from Afrihost after they cut me off, but more often than not I dont just want to top up with 1gig, especially over sms. I'd like to at least be able to access the client zone without having to log into my router.

You could also top up via the mobile clientzone-app